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Children

School

Helping a child release school related insecurity and anxiety - visualizing balloons as you tap

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

Hi Everyone,

Children respond well to EFT but it is usually necessary to "enter their world" in order to gain rapport. Deborah Miller, PhD from Mexico does just that by integrating a delightful balloon visualization with EFT.

Hugs, Gary


By Deborah Miller, PhD

Hi Gary,

I worked with Lupita, an 11 year old girl. She is a sweet child who moved to a new school two years ago. Since the move she has not enjoyed school nor been doing well academically.

At first she was shy about talking about why she didn’t like school so her mother interjected and stated several reasons. Lupita was still uncomfortable. So I asked her if she had ever worked with someone like me who was going to do EFT with her. She said no so I told her not to worry because it was a new experience and that we would do this together, her, her mother and me. Between all of us we’d share what we needed to help her. She immediately relaxed.

We started with the problems at school. There is a group of students, boys and girls, who tell her daily that she is stupid and ugly. It bothers her immensely, so much so that she doesn’t want to go to school. No wonder her grades are not up to par.

After showing Lupita the tapping points, we started tapping on the emotions she felt when these students said these mean things to her. She immediately started to cry. We tapped on the hurt feelings, the sadness, the loneliness, the isolation. We also tapped on how it wasn’t her fault that the others called her names and she didn’t need to take it personally.

She relaxed some.

We tapped on how sometimes others are mean when they feel inferior so they say mean things to make themselves feel better, bigger or more important. I realized that she was doing well with the words I was using, but I wanted to reach a deeper level. So I decided to use visualizing while tapping.

While tapping, I asked her if she would like to get rid of these feelings. She nodded yes. I asked if she could imagine a balloon filling up with the emotions she felt when the students said she was ugly. She nodded yes. I asked her what color the balloon was. She said green. I asked if she could see it filling up with the sadness she felt. I asked how big the balloon was. It was twice the size of my house. That’s a lot of emotion being held onto.

We continued to tap on the points during this dialog. I asked if she had put every sad emotion into the balloon and she nodded yes. Then I asked her to cut the string tying the balloon to her. She did so. When I asked her where the balloon went she said up in the sky. I asked her what she would like to put in the space in her body where the sadness used to be. She said happiness. I asked if we could also add love and she agreed. I asked her what color happiness and love were and she said red. So we tapped that she was filling up with happiness and love and it was red. We tapped and visualized until she felt full of happiness and love. She looked visibly relieved and a smile came to her face.

Then we went back to deal with the other emotions around the students at school and her not wanting to do her homework. I asked her to fill another balloon. This time it was a red one. We tapped on her being smart and capable of doing her homework. That she could find ways to make it fun, like drawing. She likes to sketch things. That she studies so that she can do well on her exams even if those other students cheat. It doesn’t make them smarter than her. She will study so that she is really intelligent.

She filled the balloon with her hurt feelings and cut it loose. We filled the space in her body with tranquility and it looked blue. Again a smile came across her face.

The last topic was about her father not coming to see her. (Her parents are divorced and live with their grandmother.) It made her feel very sad. She wanted him to come more often but he didn’t. So we picked another balloon, a blue one. She filled it with her loneliness and feelings of being rejected by her father. Again she cut this balloon free. This time she wanted to fill the space with love. It was pink. A hot pink. I asked what kind of flower it was and she said a rose. So we laughed about her being a hot pink rose, a beautiful pink rose.

During this session we tapped on the following emotions and ideas:

* hurt

* feeling ugly

* feeling stupid

* sadness

* rejection

* wanting to be accepted and loved by her father and others

* forgiving others when they say bad things because they might not feel good about themselves so they hurt others in order to feel better

* being responsible for her own studies no matter if others cheat

* she doesn’t have to take what others say personally because inside she knows she’s ok

* she is beautiful inside and that makes her beautiful outside

Afterwards, her mother said she didn’t realize her daughter was holding in so many emotions, but was glad to see her daughter so relaxed.

I enjoyed the process of using visualization with this child. It helped her release quickly and in a way that was fun for her. That made the experience enjoyable for both of us.

Deborah Miller, Ph.D.

More articles on Children's Issues

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